redhead redux and thoughts about food

[dchenes]

I tried coloring my hair again today. Since I couldn't find anything close to what I did last time, I damned the torpedoes and went for real red this time. It worked, too, at least from the ears up. Somehow I managed to get not quite enough dye in the long parts (I blame the bathroom smelling like ammonia). So it's brunette at the ends and sort of fades into red in the middle, and is rather red on top. Since I'm having my hairs cut on Monday and most of the length is going, I'm not terribly dismayed. Pictures will be forthcoming after the haircut if I can find any decent light to take pictures in. It's very dark in my apartment when it's cloudy out.

Speaking of trying things, I'm trying a new criterion for food shopping. When I do my major food shopping for the week, I'm not buying anything that has corn syrup in it. It's partly an experiment to see if I miss anything in particular, partly an attempt to eat less processed stuff and see if I can't lose some weight that way, and partly a reaction to buying some smoked sausage a while ago and discovering there was corn syrup in that. Of all the things to have corn syrup as an ingredient, sausages shouldn't be one of them.

I bought the ingredients for the traditional Easter lasagna today. My version isn't quite THE traditional version, because mine doesn't have meat in it (I don't like the hamburger I get here) and I can't get the same brand of sauce my mother starts with. The sauce is less of a problem because I start with the most basic spaghetti sauce I can find (without corn syrup, or sugar, in it) and add things to it until it tastes right.

Is it unusual not to brown meatballs before you put them in the sauce? My family has never done that; we put the meatballs directly in the sauce and cook them there, and I don't think I've ever heard of anyone else doing it that way. Of course, my grandmother's spaghetti sauce recipe has whole cloves in it, because when my great-grandmother told my grandmother the recipe, she said "two cloves" meaning cloves of garlic, but my grandmother isn't Italian, so she put two whole cloves in it. I suppose that's sort of an Italian version of cutting the end off the ham.

If I do nothing else spring-cleaning-wise today, I should at least take out the trash and the cardboard recycling.

Comments

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Cutting the end off the ham?

[dchenes.livejournal.com]

It's one of those family things that persists for ages; you cut the end off the ham because your mother did, because her mother did, because her mother did, because the ham wouldn't fit in the pan your great-grandmother had to cook it in. By the time it gets to you, you have a pan the ham will fit in, but you cut the end off anyway because that's the way it's done.

My family doesn't have that particular tradition, because we stopped having ham for Easter years ago. My father got tired of it, and my mother asked him what he wanted, and he said "Lasagna", so we've had lasagna for Easter ever since.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

Aha. A similar idiom I know is "guarding the bench". There's a story about a colonel promoted to command an army base, and one of the first things he has to do is assign a detail to guard a park bench outside the officer's club, apparently a tradition of some sort. That evening, there is a ceremony in which he meets some of the former commanders for the base, and he works his way through them asking about the bench and why on earth it needs an honor guard, with each one pointing to the previous base commander. Finally he gets to this retired general and asks him about it, only to get laughter for a reply. "Fifty years and the paint still isn't dry?!".

[prunesnprisms.livejournal.com]

The way I heard it, it's a Jewish story the Globe printed about 3 yeas ago at Passover, and it was brisket.

[siercia]

My mom always cooked her meatballs in the sauce. I love how they come out that way. I do al well if I have time to simmer and cook them - if not I brown them instead.

What's really cooking?

[marmota.livejournal.com]

*sniff* *sniff*... hmm, smells like an urban legend to me!